


Just Keep Swimming (i swear you won't drown)

by ElementKitsune



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Mermaid Blue, Near drowning scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 04:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElementKitsune/pseuds/ElementKitsune
Summary: Lance remembers two things about the day he nearly drowned; just how blue the mermaid who saved him was, and how he never got to thank her. It's a strange place between lucky and not when he finally gets the chance to make up for that.





	Just Keep Swimming (i swear you won't drown)

**Author's Note:**

> For the Lance Flash Bang ([@voltronbigbang](http://voltronbigbang.tumblr.com/)) on tumblr!
> 
> Thank you to the amazing [@mikossu](http://mikossu.tumblr.com/) for working on this event with me.

When he is very, very young, Lance falls into the sea.

It’s an accident, of course. The mass of Espinosa-and-assorted-other-family-names children are playing tag near a rocky section of the beach, and tag tends to have some _spectacular_ collisions.

Unluckily for Lance, one collision happens on the edge of the rocks where he’s talking to Veronica. Luiz stumbles into him, so Lance’s foot lifts and steps down on nothing but air, his arms windmill, and Lance sees the playful expressions of his siblings morph into shock worry fear as he falls falls falls—

—down.

Stories often forget the initial chill. When Lance’s body hits the water, it bursts before seeping into his skin and cold wraps around him like an uncomfortable blanket until it reaches his chest and pulls his breath away.

Bubbles escape his mouth, his eyes stare wide open at the sky, water floods into his mouth but not his throat, not yet, and he knows there’s something weird happening because he isn’t flailing, isn’t rising to the surface, he’s just… listening to the water around him, _way_ calmer than usual, than he really should be.

That’s when the mermaid comes.

What Lance will remember most, even when he’s old, gray, and his memory swims in and out of existence, is how _blue_ she is.

It’s like watching the sky touch the sea. Different shades flow from one to another because her hair, scales, eyes, _everything_ is blue blue blue.

It’s so beautiful that Lance forgets everything—the water thrumming around him, how his lungs _burn_ —everything except how Luiz and Veronica had looked afraid.

 _Who are you,_ he wants to ask, but there’s still water in his mouth and strange calm aside, Lance knows better. The mermaid swims closer, until she’s close enough for their noses to touch and him to feel the waves of her sigh.

“Oh, my paladin,” she whispers, kissing on his forehead. It feels like when his mom reels him in to kiss his cheek, when his dad pulls him in for a hug, when he’s playing with his siblings…

It feels like home, something so startling he almost doesn’t realize he’s not drowning, chest heaving and heart racing against his breaths.

“Who—” he starts, because questions trapped in his throat are trying to break free, like _Who are you? Why did you save me and call me your paladin?_ but the mermaid doesn’t wait. Instead, she grabs his waist and whirls up up up until they’re breaking the surface and Lance is gasping, his lungs are burning his nose his _everything_ —

“Hey, _hey,_ ” says the mermaid, though she’s… not a mermaid? The arm around his waist is warm and soft instead of cold and scaly, and he takes a moment to gape at how she’s _less_ blue than only a few seconds ago, at how he sees someone that looks—that _is_ human. “Breath with me, okay kiddo?”

And Lance does until he can breathe on his own, until Mama and Papa are splashing towards him with worry and something like fear and the mermaid (is she really?) hands him over with a crooked smile.

“Take care of yourself,” she tells him as she swims away.

That’s when he realizes that all the time, she’d been _humming_.

And it’s only when they’re rushing away from the beach, Papa muttering curses towards the sea under his breath (they’d fade away, eventually), that Lance realizes he’d never thanked her.

Oh no.

* * *

The sand is soft but _hot_ under his feet, and Lance wonders if the mermaid will ever show up again. Ten years of obsessively returning to the same old beach to say thank you hasn’t exactly turned up any results.

(he can almost see his abuela shake her head. _You’ll drown, Lancito,_ she always says. _This mermaid of yours will watch you drown and have you for her meal_ )

(no one ever said abuela was cheerful)

But, he’s Lance Espinosa and that may not mean anything to this mermaid, or even to abuela considering her derision, but it means that he won’t give up until he finally gets to thank this mermaid for saving his life.

Luckily, he gets his chance. Unluckily, that chance comes from the ocean surging out of control when he’s chest deep. Even the best swimmers would have a hard time dealing with waves sailing over their heads and knocking them off their feet when they didn’t know it was there until the moment it hit them.

Of course, Lance gets tossed to the sand under his feet, water beating against his chest, wailing on him like a toddler without their favourite toy.

He doesn’t know if he’ll reach the surface for a terrifying moment, before he somersaults, waits for the wave to pass, darts up and _breathes,_ right before the next one knocks him down again.

Memories start to pour in like droplets of rain, and a link between then and now (other than the obvious link of _oh hey I might just drown_ ) comes up—the calm that washes over him, even though Lance feels like he should be anything but.

Still, he keeps going through the motions of not drowning like his life depends on it, which, well. It _does._ Get knocked down, prep to resurface, resurface, _breathe_ , get knocked down, get rinsed to repeat.

He doesn’t know how many times he does this cycle or for how long, but it’s long enough that his legs start to ache and cramp up and his shoulders become sore—long enough that Lance isn’t sure if he can keep going.

Maybe that’s why the mermaid eventually comes, bluer than all the sea around her. Because Lance’s everything is aching under the strain of _surviving,_ and his ears only start to register the humming when he can’t focus on anything but feeling if he wants to live. Because he’s finally off tempo when it comes to his cycle, and he crashes down into open, scaly arms.

“You’ve done well, my paladin,” says the mermaid with song in her words, and the kiss she plants on his temple feels like a reassurance. “You can rest now.” Her fingers thread through his hair. “You won’t drown while I’m here.”

And the thing is, her smile is full of teeth that abuela says is for ripping flesh from bone, and her nails are claws that barely avoid his skin, and ten years of wishing and remembering suddenly seems pale in the face of ten years of warnings.

“I promise you won’t drown,” she says more firmly, but Lance doesn’t let go of his air, just stares and stares until his body screams and he can’t hold it back any longer.

Air escapes him, water rushes into his lungs, and Lance doesn’t want to breathe but he _does_ —

And he’s fine. Breathing.

Alive.

“It’s not safe here.” The mermaid frowns. With the promise that she’ll take him home (he trusts that. She has before), they swim off to her home.

* * *

When they reach the mermaid’s cavern, she introduces herself.

“I’m Blue,” she hums, lazily floating around.

“I’m Lance,” he says, leaning into the hand on his cheek. Then, his ten year quest crashes into his mind all at once, and he can’t help blurting out—”Thank you! I really wanted to say thank you because I never got to before and now you’ve saved me again and I just—” He breathes in and out, like Pidge in the middle of a rant. “Thank you.”

Blue laughs. It isn’t harsh or anything. She’s laughing _with_ him and he just feels _warm_. “It’s my pleasure,” she says. Their foreheads are close enough to touch. “You’re very, very welcome.”

Then her head darts up and she _beams_ with teeth gleaming white. (there’s a part of him that suspects they’re blue, like the rest of her)

“The water has calmed.” She twirls until they’re face to face, both of them upright, and her smile becomes feather soft when she takes Lance’s hand. “You can go home whenever you like.” She pauses like a break between waves. “Would you like to go now?”

Lance nods without thinking (he feels like the first time he met her, young small _helpless_ ) and Blue wraps her arms around his waist. With a flick of her tail, they’re cutting through the water like lightning through the sky, and it’s barely any time at all before Blue’s moving to leave.

“Wait!” he says, and she freezes, still as stone. Her head swivels back and Lance continues. “Uh, will you come back one day? I—” He gulps because the words feel so _stupid_ , because he’s a _teenager_ now but he really—“I want to be your friend.”

Blue turns towards him, mouth open in a little o, and then smiles with the brilliance of an oyster revealing its pearl.

“I would love to,” she tells him, soft and gentle and it…

Feels like truth. Like home. Like enough.

Lance can’t help but smile back.


End file.
